"LITTLE BEAR RIDGE ROAD:" Grasping For Life Behind A Screen
Sometimes you turn up the TV to hear better; other times, to hear better, you just turn it off. This is not the lesson or even the moral of Little Bear Ridge Road, the ineffably terse piece of theater now starring the exquisitely terse Laurie Metcalf for a limited time on Broadway. TV is just the conduit through which the characters of this play try to listen.
Little Bear Ridge Road revolves around a large Barcalounger-for-three orbiting in an empty cosmos on the outskirts of an isolated Idaho town. The TV is on throughout much of Little Bear Ridge Road (we are told) and it is the focus of attention (or lack of attention) for the lone soul initially planted on that Barcalounger — Sarah; suddenly joined by her prodigal nephew, Ethan, who has returned after a long absence and, later, by a third watcher, Kenny, who says he is in love with Ethan — or is it Ethan who has said it?
The TV allows Sarah to alternately ignore Ethan and Kenny, or acknowledge them by sharing what she is watching. The TV becomes her bridge from alienation to, ever-so-halting connection. The TV is not a metaphor, it is simply the only thing there, just out of sight, beyond the Barcalounger and the abyss.
I generally like short, terse plays, particularly without intermissions. I love Laurie Metcalf (who doesn’t?), an actress who is a short, terse play unto herself in every role I have ever seen her take on; an actress who needs no intermission. In playwright Samuel D. Hunter’s Little Bear Ridge Road, she presents the embittered, doomed Sarah without pity or affectation, to say nothing of affection. Here is this lady — her performance simply allows. You don’t have to hate her or love her. Just let her be.
Ethan is as emotionally out of control as his aunt, witheringly, is not. Micah Stock plays him as a flailing bundle of aggressions and regressions. Under the onslaught of Ethan’s desperation, his aunt slowly lets Ethan in, but only enough to occupy a bit of space on that Barcalounger. The fact that Ethan is also supposed to be a blocked writer of fiction seemed, to me, a bit of a dramaturgical stretch, but it does neatly set up the play’s brutal punch line.
John Drea brings a gentle dose of calm to the spinning Barcalounger as a lovelorn astrophysicist named Kenny. It’s easy to warm toward Kenny, as the other two characters just barely do, but I’m not sure any of us really needed him.
The direction by the estimable Joe Mantello is, as ever, sensitively wrought and effortlessly deployed. I would like to ask, Joe, though, why a hermit like Sarah would choose a three-seater Barcalounger for her living room. Call it her MacGuffin.
The sparks in Mr. Hunter’s play are all really between Sarah and Sarah. Her struggles are titanic and ultimately unavailing. Watching Laurie Metcalf wrestle them in and out of submission is something I won’t soon forget. I dare you to try.